occasionally people, especially of opposite sexes, try to
administer it to each other in that form, with asphyxiation resulting to
both hearts. And I'm willing to confess that it is generally a woman's
fault when such an accident occurs. That is, it is a mistake of her
nature, not one of intent. But she is learning!

Also when a woman is created, the winds have wooed star-dust, rose-dew,
peach-down, and a few flint-shavings into a whirlwind of deviltry, and
the world at large looks on in wonder and sore amazement, as well as
breathless interest. I know, because I am one, and have just been waked
up by the gyrations of the cyclone; and I'm deeply confounded. I don't
like it, and wish I could have slept longer, but Fate and Jane Mathers
decreed otherwise. At least Jane decreed, and Fate seems so far helpless
to controvert the decree.

I might have known that when this jolly, easy-going old Fate of mine,
which I inherited from a lot of indolent, pleasure-loving Harpeth Valley
Tennesseans, let me pack up my graduating thesis, my B.S., and some
delicious frocks, and go off to Paris for a degree from the Beaux Arts
in Architecture, we would be caught up with by some kind of Nemesis or
other, and put in our place in the biological and ethnological scheme of
existence. Yes, Fate and I are placed, and Jane did it.

Also, I am glad, now that I know what is going to happen to me, that I
had last week on shipboard, with Richard Hall bombarding my cardiac
regions with his honest eyes and booming voice discreetly muffled to
accord with the moonlight and the quiet places around the deck. I may
never get that sort of a joy-drink again, but it was so well done that
it will help me to administer the same to others when the awful occasion
arrives.

"A woman is the spark that lights the flame on the altar of the inner
man, dear, and you'll have to sparkle when your time comes," he warned
me, as I hurried what might have been a very tender parting, the last
night at sea.

"_Spark_"--she's a conflagration by this new plan of Jane's, but I'm
glad he didn't know about it then. He may have to suffer from it yet. It
is best for him to be as happy as he can as long as he can.

"Evelina, dear," said Jane, as she and Mary Elizabeth Conners and I sat
in the suite of apartments in which our proud Alma Mater had lodged us
old grads, returned for our second degrees, "your success has been
remarkable, and I am not surprised at all that that positi